


Catharsis

by pastanoodle



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Angst much Sakura?, Author is unreliable, BAMF Haruno Sakura, Canon Divergence, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Mental Instability, Multi, Realistic, Realistic ninja world, Sakura is a smol angry child, Sakura would be great if she wasn't a female character written by Kishimoto, Self-Esteem Issues, Timeline What Timeline, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, but she just reflects Sakura's own feelings, divergence from canon, eventually, inner is a mental illness, jesus heck I gave Sakura a lot of issues, slow divergence from cannon, what are updates?, which aren't very happy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-06-01 23:26:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6541033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pastanoodle/pseuds/pastanoodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakura isn't the kind of person to survive past Genin. She wears pink, fights over boys, and can't throw a Kunai to save her life. Which is why no one expects her to live very long. To Sakura, graduating from the academy is like a reality check. Being a shinobi is nothing close to how civilian romance novels make it seem. Sakura has always been terrible at stopping when she should. So she changes pink to grey, forces herself to ignore Sasuke, and learns how to shatter bones with a single punch. Screw surviving. Sakura knows she's going to die, but she'll go down fighting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Weak

**Author's Note:**

> So this is really just me messing around, but I got the idea stuck in my head so here it is. This is sort of a what if, because I think at the beginning of Naruto, Sakura was not in a very healthy place. Naruto was starting to get better than her, Kakashi had dismissed her as boy crazy, (because she was) lastly Sasuke made it clear how much he disliked her. So if inner is just Sakura's true feelings, than I can see how that could end badly. There might be somethings that could trigger, so check the tags, and thank you for reading my shitty excuse for writing!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ca·thar·sis  
> kəˈTHärsəs/Submit  
> noun  
> 1.  
> the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.

Haruno Sakura is weak.

 

It’s just a fact. Naruto is annoying, Sasuke is an Uchiha, and Sakura is weak. It’s a fact that Sakura herself knows well. It’s a fact that she is reminded of every single day.

Sasuke never gets hit when they spar, and Naruto jumps right back up as if he wasn’t hit in the first place. Sakura stays on the ground, winded and dazed. They run laps, and she is always the last to finish.

Sasuke can breathe fire, Naruto can make endless copies of himself, and Sakura can do what? She can arrange flowers, complete the three main academy jutsu, and recite every single shinobi rule.

None of that is enough to get their teacher to pay her any attention. His eyes stay firmly stuck on his other two students. And Sakura understands.

She looks at herself in the mirror and tells herself it makes sense. It’s a nightly ritual, after the D-ranks and training, where she practices ignoring her anger.

 Her body is unnaturally bony, with purple bruises, chipped nails, and tangled pink hair. Sakura tried to fix everything in the beginning, but after weeks of weeding gardens and picking up trash, she accepted it as a norm.

Ignoring the urge she gets to start poking at bruises, Sakura starts tugging a comb through her hair. She falls into the methodical rhythm of getting ready to sleep because it’s easier that way. Shower, brush teeth, ignore Inner screaming, put on pajamas.

“Get better, become a Chunin, spend the rest of your life as a paper ninja.” It’s been her anthem since she was put in team seven. In the academy, she had dreams of becoming Mrs. Uchiha and retiring early to have four children. It feels delusional now.

Sasuke had seen her cry. He’d seen her be punched so hard she’d thrown up. He had made it obvious what he thought of her. _Useless._

And Sakura couldn't argue, she knew he was right. She wasn't worthy of having the Uchiha name.

 -0-

Sakura wakes up at five the next morning, takes a shower, eats a small breakfast, and heads for the training ground by six-thirty. She knows Kakashi won’t be there until ten, but Sasuke gets there at seven.

Sakura then spends her remaining time at the bridge awkwardly trying to talk to him. Naruto shows up at nine-forty, and Kakashi appears right as she finishes punching Naruto in the face.

They then proceed to mess up every single D-rank they do, while Kakashi hides behind his porn. By the time Sakura is about to just give up, he declares them ready for training.

Then it’s laps and sparing. Naruto reluctantly beats Sakura, Sasuke smugly punches Naruto, and finally, Sakura loses once more to Sasuke. Then they stretch, and Sakura heads home tired and humiliated. Trying to imagine herself as a Chunin aide, trying to ignore thinking about the disappointed looks she gets from Kakashi with ever spar she loses, she gets ready for bed. 

Sakura goes to sleep at eight-thirty, feeling angry and pathetic. Every day the same thing happens, and every day Sakura feels a little bit angrier. She's not getting any stronger, she's not improving.

 -0-

Sakura’s weakness starts to twist into something worse, an uncomfortable rage that stays right below the surface of her skin. The only time Inner talks now is when it’s to insult her. She gets beat down in every spar, and the anger roles uncomfortably inside of her.

She had never been angry at Sasuke before, and the realization that she is makes her scared. She wants Ino to show up at her house and make everything seem clear again. But Ino won’t because Sakura made sure to let her know they weren’t friends.

She works harder during training, running laps until sweat drips into her eyes. Her punches turn into sharp, stinging jabs. She snaps at Naruto more and spends her free time launching Kunai at practice dummies.

After a particularly terrible mission catching a cat, Sakura is embarrassingly close to screaming at the Hokage. Luckily, Naruto does it for her. She waits for the Hokage to start scolding him, but instead, they leave the mission office with their first C-rank assigned.

Sakura wants to feel happy about it, but she can’t bring herself to. If she had asked, would they have taken her seriously, or would she have left with another D-rank?

Inner whispers back to her, reminds her that no one ever takes her seriously. ‘ _We’re the only one on team seven the Hokage wouldn’t have listened to_.’ For once, Sakura wishes Inner had just screamed instead.

She goes home, tells her mother about the mission, packs her bag and tries to stay calm.

‘ _None of them want us to go anyway. They all know they’re better off without us_ ,’ inner hisses. ‘ _We’re a liability._ ’ Sakura curls up under her covers and bites into her arm.

 She wants to punch something, she wants to scream, but her parents are asleep in the room across from hers and screaming would be like acknowledging what Inner is saying.

“Get better, become a Chunin, spend the rest of your life as a paper ninja,” Sakura repeats it until inner is silent. She falls into a restless sleep just as the sun starts shining through her window. Anger is starting to feel normal.

 

Sakura is weak, and she is reminded of it every day.

Sakura is weak, but she doesn’t want to be.


	2. Poison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Sakura fucks cannon up and fucks up her life in the process.

Sakura wakes up gradually, awareness returning in pieces. The scratch of her sheets, light against her eyelids, and then throbbing pain.

Her eyes flick open and the first thing she notices is the marring of bite-shaped bruises scattered across the inside of her arm. As Sakura pushes herself out of bed and checks her alarm clock, she absentmindedly traces the purple crescent shapes.

Sakura did the same thing when she was younger, before she met Ino, back when her life was hiding from bullies and wishing she could just disappear. The fact that she has resorted to the same method of dealing with Inner now, as she did then, makes a toxic feeling build in her lungs.

She thought she had changed, but this is just more proof that she hasn’t. Sakura doesn’t want to acknowledge it and forces herself into a grey jacket.

It’s ugly and dull, but it’s also one of the only long sleeved things she owns. Sakura is feeling kind of dull and ugly too, so she decides it works.

She’s running twenty minutes late but figures Kakashi will be there even later. Her bag is packed from the night before, but she spends extra time checking everything. Shoving more medical supplies in, Sakura forces herself to walk to the village’s west wall entrance.

Naruto is already there, poking at Sasuke, who is trying and failing to ignore him. The excitable boy stops when he sees her, and a worried expression crosses his face. If Naruto realizes something is wrong, it must be obvious to everyone else.

“Sorry I’m late, I was so excited I forgot to set my alarm last night!” Her voice sounds fake and overly sweet, but Sasuke just grunts and Naruto starts to chatter about how eager he was to go.

 “I was in such I hurry to get here, I didn’t even brush my teeth.” Naruto almost seems to expect her to tell him how gross that is, but she was too much of a mess this morning to brush her teeth either.

She manages a tight smile and is saved when an annoyed voice cuts in. “I ordered protection for a C-rank mission, and all I get is three brats?”

An old man is leaning against the village wall, sake in hand, looking overly offended. Naruto is about to retort, but Sakura does before him.

Lack of sleep makes her irritable, and really, she doesn’t have to take shit from a drunkard. “You paid for a C-rank, and you’ll get one as long as you keep that trashcan you call a mouth shut.”

Sakura winces, that’s definitely not how you get a good tip from your client. “Erm, I-I mean, we’ll do our best to keep you, safe sir.” Silence drifts awkwardly around all four of them for a moment, but Kakashi interrupts it by cheerfully adding “Well said, but I’d stick to just that last part in the future, Sakura.”

Sakura blinks as an answer, too busy trying to figure out how Kakashi always shows up right when she does something embarrassing.

“Besides, Tazuna, was it?” Kakashi continues, “As a Jounin of Konoha, I assure you that there is nothing to worry about. Wave is only a day’s walk from here, and I doubt we’ll run into anything more than bandits.”

-0-

Sakura spends the first part of their trip desperately trying to suck up to Kakashi, while Sasuke and Naruto walk in front. She’s starting to realize that out of all four of team seven, she’s the only one with any social skills.

 Sakura is in the middle of asking a question she already knows the answer to, just to fill the silence, when the two ninja attack.

It happens too fast for Sakura to follow. One moment they aren’t there, and the next moment, they’ve pulled Kakashi to pieces with bladed chains. Sakura watches as what’s left of him splatters on the ground.

“One down.” The voice comes from both men.

‘That’s all Kakashi amounts to,’ she thinks numbly. ‘To them, he is just a number.’

Time seems to stop for her, but it doesn’t for their attackers. She hears Naruto scream their sensei’s name, and then the same gruff voices saying “Two down.”

The ninja’s chain is about to wrap around Naruto when Sasuke reacts. He pins the chain to a tree with his kunai and pulls until it snaps out of both of the ninja's grasp.

Sakura is starting to think she might get out of this alive when the shinobi start heading towards her. She manages to ignore her urge to run, and steps in front of Tazuna, a kunai held in her shaking hands.

Inner is screaming at her to do something, but her limbs feel like stone. “Useless,” Inner howls. “Don’t be so fucking useless!” Sakura barely notices she’s saying the same thing out loud.

 Inner’s rage is Sakura’s as well, and her hands stop shaking. She crouches and grips the kunai harder, aiming for in between the man’s ribs. Sakura has trained for this. The Academy drilled every step she needs to take into her until it is muscle memory. Sakura knows he is going to die the moment she positions her kunai.

He can see what’s going to happen too, but he can’t stop himself. His own momentum sends him straight onto the waiting point of her weapon. Sakura doesn’t wait for him to react. She takes the kunai and shoves it deeper into the space between his ribs.

 Sakura feels a sharp pain as desperate hands claw at her neck, but she ignores it and keeps going. Distantly she hears screaming, and she thinks it might be his.

No, it’s the other mans. The one she has just stabbed is already dead. His blood is covering her hands, and Sakura feels glad she chose an ugly jacket to wear today because it’s going to have some serious stains.

 A hand grips her arm, and Sakura almost tries to cut it off, but she recognizes Sasuke’s gloves and stops herself.

“That,” a familiar voice drawls, “was not what I was hoping would happen.” Kakashi stands by Naruto, casually holding the remaining shinobi with one arm.

Sakura manages to wobble out, “I thought you were supposed to be dead.”

Kakashi sighs dramatically, “Mah Sakura, no need to sound so disappointed.” He looks at her for a moment, but then his eye slides back to Naruto and his voice turns serious. “There claws are poisoned, we need to open the wound before it spreads.”

Sakura lets go of the kunai and tries to wipe her hands on her jacket, except there’s blood on that too. Sakura gives up and focuses on not feeling bitter.

She just finished killing a man, but of course Naruto is poisoned, and of course, Kakashi has to check on that first.

_‘His back is turned_ ,’ Inner hisses, ‘ _stab him in the spine._ ’ Sakura lets out a choked whimper. Inner always has plenty of things to say about Sakura, but violence focused on other people is new. She doesn’t like it.

She digs her fingernails into the skin on her neck and tries to ignore how her lungs feel like they’re collapsing.

“Hey,” a voice rings in her ears. “Hey, are you okay?” Sakura tries to force a shaky breath and looks up at Sasuke. “Y-yeah, I’m great.”

He looks panicked, and Sakura thinks this is the first time she’s seen anything other than smug or brooding on him. It looks nice.

“You’re really pretty,” she slurs out, feeling like it’s something very important for him to know. The world seems to be moving from underneath her feet, and Sakura dazedly thinks that maybe she lied when she said she was great.

“Sakura’s been cut too!” Sasuke’s voice rings in her ears. “I think she’s poisoned.” She thinks maybe he’s worried about her, and wouldn’t that be nice.

“Nope,” she manages to make her mouth move, “I’m a hundred percent not poisoned, and we can keep going with the mission. I will not be the one to slow our team down.”

Sakura promptly vomits everything in her stomach onto Sasuke’s shoes and then crumples to the ground. She wants to move her head, to look at Sasuke again, but her muscles won’t work.

Kakashi’s face blurs before her, and Sakura would scream if she could get her lungs to work.

She hates this, hates that she can’t even kill someone without fucking things up. ‘ _Never again_ ,’ Inner promises, and for once, Sakura agrees

-0-

In another world, Sakura would be fine with being weak. In another world, when faced with the Demon Brothers, Sakura would have closed her eyes and hoped for the best.

In another world Team Seven would complete their mission to Wave, Haku would give Naruto his shinobi way, and Sasuke would unlock his Sharingan. In that world, Sasuke and Naruto would start a rival-like friendship.

But this is not that world, and Sakura is not that girl. Instead, she wakes up in an empty hospital room feeling bitter, rips out her IV, changes from her hospital gown to the shinobi regulation clothes folded by her cot, and jumps through the room’s window.

She heads straight to the closest training ground and punches dents into training dummies until her hands bleed.

For better or for worse, this is not another world, and Sakura is _not_ okay with being weak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup, that's right. I did that. I just skipped the entire wave arc. I felt like I couldn't write Sakura as a badass through the whole arc because she hasn't had enough character growth, and I couldn't bring myself to write her into the background. She's the main character after all! This is my first big cannon divergence, but it won't be the last. For anyone who really wanted so Zabu and Haku, don't worry! There might be a few appearances later in the story. I love them way too much to leave them out. And yes, Sakura killed a Demon brother, who was C-rank. I think it was because he wasn't taking her seriously, and she was pretty angry. If Sasuke could have killed one of them, like he almost did in the manga, than Catharsis Sakura could have gotten lucky. I also think that she's already slightly stronger than cannon Sakura because of a little extra training. Thank you for reading, and Comments make my day! Kudos make my week! I wish I was kidding but I'm super reliant on praise.


	3. Genesis

Kakashi watches as his only Kunoichi tears through the training ground, and briefly considers interrupting her. Part of him says it’s his job as a Jounin Instructor, the other colder part of him holds back. Kakashi knows he isn’t meant to be a teacher. He’s meant to be a killer. That means he can’t be the one to take care of Sakura because he’d only do more harm than good. He’s _friend-killer Kakashi_ , and he can’t let himself forget that.

Even as Sakura delivers a punch that breaks her bones along with the wood of the dummy, he holds back. Instead, Kakashi calls for a medic and leaves the training ground without even letting Sakura know he was there. Her gasping cries follow him as he jumps past trees, and it feels way too much like another girl’s crying. “Rin,” he thinks, “What am I supposed to do?” Memories of blood and lightning flash before his eyes, and he knows he’s made the right choice. He’s not going to start caring now, not when he’s spent years pushing people away. Kakashi won’t let himself make the same mistake twice.

-0-

The medi-nin give Sakura a few hours before they find and drag her back to the hospital. Sakura is bleeding, sweating, and crying. Dried snot smears across her face, and she knows she’s never been more of a mess. She supposes she should be embarrassed, but feels like it’s a little late for that. They heal her knuckles, stick an IV back in her arm, and give her a long lecture.

“Are you listening Sakura? You need more time to recover. The poison you had in your system was dangerously fast acting. If you had gotten here any later, you would have been dead. You need time to heal after that.” Most of what the medic says floats right past her, but one thing sticks. ‘You would have been dead.’ Dead? Is it really that easy to die? Sakura thinks about blood on her hands and decides that yes, it’s more than that easy.

They keep her in the hospital for two weeks. Her parents visit every day, and Sakura can’t stand it. They both treat her like she’s made of glass. Sakura knows she’s killed someone, but isn’t that what a shinobi is supposed to do?

She has read the first kill section of the Genin handbook fifteen times. It’s normal to feel sad, it’s normal to feel sick, it’s normal to have nightmares. It’s not enough to prepare her for what it’s really like. Every time she sleeps, she dreams about the man’s face as he dies. Sakura hates it, but Inner has become even more obsessive. She leaves the fluorescent hospital light on and tries to ignore Inner repeating the same memory over and over again. The force of a body against her knife, then the crunching sounds of his ribs, and finally realizing that she was covered in his blood.

Instead of sleeping, she sits in her hospital bed and flips through Poison for Beginners. ‘A drop of liquid,’ Sakura muses, ‘can kill a full-grown man.’ Her mother and the medics are concerned, but Sakura can’t be bothered to listen to their lectures. ‘It’s so very easy to die,’ and she finds that she really doesn’t want to. Staying confined to the hospital gives her too much time to think.

No one from Team Seven has visited. She expected that from Sasuke, but not from Naruto. It’s Kakashi that hurts her the most. Of course, he wouldn’t visit, she’s proven she’s a liability after all. Sakura understands why they might be mad at her.

It’s at the end of the second week after the mission to Wave that Sakura decides she can’t take it anymore. She’s finished all of her books and if she’s stuck in her hospital room with just Inner for any longer, Sakura will end up doing something stupid. The medics say they’re keeping her for observation, but Sakura doesn’t care. She forces her mom to sign her out and makes her way to the mission desk. She needs to do something, she needs to stop feeling so restless.

Sakura is expecting flat-out rejection, but the Chuunin at the desk gives her a knowing look and assigns her D-rank pulling weeds. It takes her less than an hour, and she finds herself back at the desk again. The same Chuunin is there. He looks at her muddy clothes and angry face, sighs, and gives her a mission cleaning out street drains.

Sakura thinks he’s giving her the worst possible jobs to get her to stop. It’s not working. She clears out all of the street drains and ends her day feeling pleasantly numb in a way only exhaustion can do. Sakura’s arms and legs shake, and she knows that two weeks at the hospital have weakened her. She needs to get back to training.

The next morning, Sakura wakes up even earlier than normal. She spends extra time carefully applying eyeliner and foundation, combs through her hair, and slides on her favorite red dress. Sakura sees her reflection in the mirror and wishes she hadn’t even looked. The newly healing scars on her neck are an uncomfortable reminder of her almost dying.

She pushes that aside and focuses on her dress. It looks wrong in every single way. It stretches uncomfortably against the muscles of her thighs and leaves her bruised arms uncomfortably exposed. Gone is any chance of looking cute or slender. She has calluses, cuts, and an uneven tan. Kami, what if Ino saw her like this? Sakura rips the dress off and chooses a bulky shirt that covers her neck and the regulation pants she took from the hospital. She ties her hair up into a quick ponytail and resists the urge to punch her mirror.

Trying to ignore her reflection, she heads to the bridge. When Sakura gets there, both Sasuke and Naruto are already running laps. She heads straight for Kakashi and ignores the increase in noise from Naruto when he sees her.

“I’m ready to start training again, sir. What do you want me to do?” She asks respectfully. Sakura expects him to scold her for not coming earlier, or tell her to start running, but he doesn’t. Instead, Kakashi slides his book back into his pouch and turns to face her completely.

“You,” he accuses, “Have a mandatory break that lasts at least another week before I can approve you for training.” He crouches down to her height and stares at her with one sharp eye. “Go do whatever twelve-year-old girls like to do. Write in your dream journal about Sasuke, read a romance novel, paint your nails. I don’t care. But you’re recovering, and you _did_ just kill someone. I’m not allowed to reinstate you until the three weeks end.”

Sakura knows she should have expected something like this, after her terrible performance during the Wave mission. But writing about Sasuke won’t get rid of the voice. Painting her nails is not going to make her any stronger. She needs this. She needs to run laps until her lungs feel like they’re going to collapse. She needs to practice Taijutsu until her skin is fully purple and blue. It’s the only thing that stops Inner from reminding her of how easily she could die. Sakura straightens her spine, nods, and stomps away.

She sneaks one last admiring look at Sasuke running laps and then huffs. If Kakashi thinks he can make her wait, he’s wrong. Sakura is going to put this last week to use. She runs downs streets, dodging civilians, and quickly reaches the Shinobi library. Sakura used to hide from bullies here, and its walls welcome her like an old friend.

Kakashi _had_ suggested reading, and the books here are much better than romance novels. She reads scrolls on how to increase chakra capacity, cast simple Genjutsu, and even one on infiltration. By the time the sun is high in the sky, Sakura feels like all the scrolls and books she’s read have mixed themselves together. Sakura loves reading, but she feels restless. She puts her books on their shelves, stops back at her house for a quick lunch, and then heads to the mission office.

The desk Chuunin is a different one than last time, and she takes more convincing. All it takes is mentioning that her Jounin Instructor is Kakashi, and the woman is suddenly all understanding smiles and pity.

“He’s a mess, isn’t he?” The Chuunin gossips like someone who’s got a vendetta. “I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to let him teach _children_. How do you feel about chopping wood?” Sakura says she’d be happy to and leaves the Chuunin to complain about Kakashi with someone else.

She chops log after log until she’s finished with the piles and there’s nothing left to chop. The old man doesn’t just give her mission pay. The place she was chopping logs for is apparently a tea house, and they send her off with sweet tea cakes. Part of Sakura reminds her to count calories, but that part is easily overrun by the rest of her. She’s been working all day, and if she wants to eat cake, she will.

Sakura sits under a large oak and watches the Sun slowly sink over the tree line. It’s a moment of complete peace that is starting to feel rare to Sakura, and she resolves to come back to the oak eventually. Then she stands on aching legs and heads back home.

Over the next three days, Sakura piles up D-ranks. Missions without Naruto -and as much as she hates to admit it- Sasuke as well, are surprisingly easy. Every Chuunin gets used to seeing her at the mission desk, and her clients all praise her for efficient work. After the seventh mission, most Chuunin cut her off, so she heads to the library to study. There, she learns about tree climbing and water walking.

With three days left of her mandatory break, Sakura tries both. Tree climbing is easy, but she hardly has enough chakra to water walk for longer than a few minutes. By the end of the week, Sakura has successfully managed to ignore anything Inner says and feels surprisingly happy. Of course, she should have known it wouldn’t last. All it takes is a few moments with the rest of Team Seven to ruin it.

“If you have time to bother me, go practice a Justu or two.” Sasuke’s voice is harsh and annoyed, “You’re more useless then Naruto.” And Sakura wants to cry. It’s the first time she’s talked to Sasuke in three weeks, and she couldn’t help being excited. She shouldn’t have tried to talk to him about tree climbing. Sasuke likes quiet girls after all.

Naruto gets offended on her behalf and tries to start a fight with Sasuke. It ends with both of them rolling on the ground like a bunch of academy students. But Sakura isn’t paying attention to that. Inner has caught on to the word useless and repeats it over and over.

“Naruto,” she interrupts both of them, “Tell Kakashi I’m still not over tragically stabbing and killing a man. I need a few more days to get past this very traumatizing event.” Sakura doesn’t wait for a response, she just needs to get away. She heads to one of the old training grounds that no one else goes to, and screams.

‘ _Sasuke likes quiet girls_ ,’ Inner reminds her. That makes her yell louder, and almost out of habit, she punches one of the worn out dummies next to her. What she does after that can’t really be counted as training. It’s better described as a giant fit. Like an angry three year old would, she breaks and rips things until the whole training ground is a mess. She pushes herself until almost all of her chakra is drained and her muscles are about to give.

Sakura knows that if she returned to Team Seven’s meet up spot, she’d still only be slightly later than Kakashi. But then she would have to face Sasuke, and thinking about that makes her want to throw a fit all over again. She heads home instead.

Sakura takes a long shower and lets herself slowly relax. She had spent the whole week actively avoiding her reflection, but today she stares at the mirror head-on.

‘Don’t think like a civilian,’ she orders, ‘think like a Kunoichi.’ She doesn’t look good in her red dress because the person who wore that was a completely different version of her. It was her before the jealousy, blood, and training. The dress was for a little girl, not a ninja. Her reflection isn’t one of a little girl. It’s sharp planes and even sharper eyes. It’s pink hair and bruised knuckles. And she is completely okay with that.

Sakura decides to never wear the dress again. “Fuck Sasuke,” she growls at her reflection. “We don’t need him. We don’t need anyone.” The dress is unceremoniously tossed in the trashcan. Her muscles mean she is strong, and her callused and bruised hands are just proof of how hard she’s worked to get there.

“I am not useless,” she tells her reflection. “I am not useless,” she repeats what she was unable to say to Sasuke. Sakura smiles when Inner is silent in response. It is not the smile of a little girl. It’s the smile of a Shinobi.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sooo, I'm back. I sort of hit a slump and haven't been doing so well in the mental health department. I don't want to use that as an excuse, but it was just really hard to get this chapter out. That being said, it's everyone who commented and sent their Kudos that really inspired me. I'm so grateful to everyone who has enjoyed this fic so far. Hopefully the next chapter will come sooner.
> 
> Sakura is the kind of character who looks up to authority figures, and I think that anything she could perceive as rejection from Kakashi would really hurt her. When Sasuke doesn't recognize all the hard work Sakura has been putting in, that's gotta hurt too. I know I'm not really putting characters in the best light, but I'm trying not to do any bashing either. I'm really ready for Sakura to get over her crush on Sasuke, but considering she forgave him so much in Cannon, I have to wait at least a little bit longer.
> 
> I was reading back through my other two chapters, and there are a lot of things that aren't that great. However, that's why I love fanfiction. It doesn't have to be perfect. And this definitely isn't, but that's okay. I hope you enjoy it anyway. Please leave a comment or Kudo to let me know if you liked it.


	4. Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Sakura takes the first steps toward ruining everything.

After she throws away the dress, Sakura changes. It’s subtle at first, and maybe she is the only one out of her team who notices, but that’s fine for now. She rejoins Team Seven practices but doesn’t stop there. Sakura trains obsessively. Her tongue becomes sharp and kunai even sharper. _She is a Shinobi._ Her room is cleared of the childish objects that once occupied it. Instead, it is filled with scrolls, weapons, a cherished copy of the shinobi rules and organized stacks of medical supplies.  Her hands are covered in scars and still open wounds from training, and she wraps them in tight coils of bandages so she doesn’t have to look at them. Her schedule is rigorous and repetitive, but Sakura knows she needs it. _She is a Shinobi._

That means it is okay that sometimes she wakes up after hours of training, not remembering when she passed out from exhaustion. That means it is fine if her mother and father quietly whisper about her in the kitchen. Sakura doesn’t mind. She knows they have seen the change in her as well. It is impossible to look at her without knowing she is a ninja. All of her clothes are regulation and she keeps her hair tied back into a tight bun. Even the way she holds herself is different. A good ninja is quiet. A good ninja moves fluidly. A good ninja can make people feel threatened without a single action. Sakura wants all of that and Inner does as well.

The first time she beats Naruto in a spar, she thinks nothing could make her happier. Then she punches Sasuke in the face and realizes she was wrong. She had thought that hurting her crush would make her feel miserable, but Sasuke’s stunned face and what Sakura assumes is quiet approval from Kakashi makes her feel even better. After that, she trains even harder. Her body is a mass of corded muscles, cuts, and bruises. Inner is ecstatic, and Sakura tells herself she feels alive.

-0-

Sakura would punch Naruto if it wouldn’t be considered unprofessional, and then Kakashi and probably Sasuke right after that. Those feelings are not acceptable, so she pushes them down and tries to relax. Every mission they’ve gone on has been a D-rank and her team still manages to mess them up. Sakura has been completing simple missions like weeding and construction since the disaster attempt at a C-rank, and none are more difficult than the ones she has to do with her team.

Naruto and Sasuke are arguing again and Kakashi seems intent on only paying attention to his porn book. They’re supposed to be loading up a merchant’s cart, but instead, Naruto ends up pouring expensive spices all over the man’s shop. Sakura once again finds herself question the value of being in a team. “Naruto,” she snarls, interrupting his attempt at sweeping the spices he’d spilled under a shelf with his foot. “You are going to apologize to our client and then go wait outside.”

He wilts under her glare and then shuffles out the door. Sakura fights back the urge to feel bad about what she’s done by grabbing several heavy bags and carrying them to the cart. She and Sasuke work in silence until the cart is full and then they are all dismissed.

Sakura doesn’t want to admit it, but the team she has been placed on seems like it may be a failure. Beside terrible missions and tense training sessions, they barely talk to each other. A shinobi should not need to rely on others, but Sakura feels so alone. Even Inner has been quiet lately. But that shouldn’t be important, and she reminds herself that there are other worries that need far more of her attention. She is half an hour off of her schedule for the day, and that means she is going to miss necessary meditation.

Sakura mentally goes through the rest of her training routine for the day as she starts her jog back home. She’s so distracted that she doesn’t notice the people standing in the middle of the street until she’s crashed into one. “That hurt…” Someone whines in her ear and she reflexively pushes herself off whoever she has run into and stands up, face flushing red in embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry, please forgive me! I was just messing around. I should have been – wait are you Suna shinobi?” The boy she’d hit pushes off the ground as well and glares at her, “Wow, you’re sure great at noticing things aren’t you. It’s almost like I’m wearing a headband with Suna’s symbol on it.”

The girl standing behind him steps forward and smirks at her. She’s blond haired with sharp eyes, and Sakura feels her heart skip a beat in her chest. The girl must be dangerous. The boy, on the other hand, looks more like he belongs in a traveling circus. She turns to face him, trying to make sure it isn’t obvious that she’s judging his face paint. “I’ll take that as a compliment then.”

Obviously, she doesn’t do a good enough job, because the boy’s face tightens and he takes a step forward. He turns to the blond girl next to him and laughs, “Leaf ninja sure are pathetic aren’t they?” Sakura is use to assholes and bullies, but there’s something about that specific insult that hits hard.  It hurts enough that Inner twists insider her angrily.

‘ _You are better than him, you know you are. You have to show him that, he needs to know. He needs to know that you can kill him.’_ Sakura pushes back Inner with practiced ease and smiles at the boy. It wouldn’t be good to hurt a ninja from a village they have treaties with. “You are allowed to believe what you wish, but I would be careful. It is dangerous to underestimate opponents.” At her words, his face loses any sign of humor. “Opponent? So I suppose you are going to be in the exam then?” He says seriously.

Sakura didn’t know there were any kind of exams happening soon, but she has no plans to admit that. “Well you’ll both just have to wait and see, won’t you? Now please excuse me, I am almost an hour off my schedule and that is unacceptable.” Ignoring the boys protest, she pushes past the two. She can feel the girl’s gaze follow her and Sakura feels nervous sweat pool against her collar. She makes eye contact with the girl and her heart feels like it’s going to stop again. Sakura thinks that this must be what killing intent feels like, and speeds up her steps. She was right, that girl really is dangerous.

As she turns the corner she feels something that reminds her strangely of Inner, and hears the boy’s voice let out a terrified sounding “Gaara?” Sakura assumes it must be someone’s name, but she doesn’t have time to wonder about that. She has to make up for lost time, and if that means losing a few more hours of sleep to train, she’ll just have to deal with it.

-0-

Sakura pulls herself out of bed at four and starts her extensive round of stretches. Going through her morning routine is therapeutic, and Sakura takes the time to make breakfast and brush her teeth slowly. Then she pulls on her undershirt and jacket, pulls up her regulation pants, grabs her pack, and then heads to the library. She arrives at the lake at six, sets her pack down, and grabs her kunai.

Sakura had started training by doing the exercises she’d read in books from the Genin section of the library, but when those stopped being challenging she started mixing them together. The kunai rest comfortably in her hand as she steps out onto the lake. Closing her eyes, she mentally runs through the steps she needs to perform. Sakura pushes air through her clenched teeth and forces her muscles to relax. Then she tenses, letting her body slide through moves that she's still not used to. It’s step after step and then Sakura lets the multiple kunai in each hand fly.

There is a restless moment where searches all the targets she’s hung up among the trees by the bank. Then she grins, satisfied. All six targets she was aiming for are perforated near their middles and it’s the closest she’s managed to get at such a distance. To celebrate, Sakura lets herself run two less laps then she normally does and treats herself to a smoothie on her way to the mission office.

It’s gotten to the point that everyone there knows her and the Chuunin on duty greets her happily. Sakura has become known as the girl who will do every D-Rank given to her, even the ones that are mostly used as punishments. It works well for both her and the mission office. They’ll let her take jobs even if she’s technically not supposed to, as long as she’ll clear out the ones no one else wants to take.

The high grade weapons she wants cost more money than she could afford if she didn’t, so it isn’t like she has a choice. After a tiring two missions where she ends up searching a sewer for a boy’s lost action figure and chasing an escaped Inuzaku dog, she pockets the money she’s earned and heads to Team Seven’s meeting spot.

Sasuke and Naruto are both there, but they don’t look surprised to see her late. Sakura has become skilled at coming right before Kakashi arrives. Sasuke wrinkles his nose at her and even though she’s embarrassed, she’s also tempted to point out that he’d smell bad too if he spent an hour in the sewer. Before she can, Kakashi finally decides to appear.

“Morning, people!” he greets cheerfully. Naruto is the only one who bothers yelling at him, but Kakashi doesn’t seem any more put off by their lack of enthusiasm any more than he normally does. “This is sudden,” he continues, “But I’ve nominated you guys for the Chuunin selection exam!”

Both Sasuke and Naruto straighten up when they hear that, and Sakura’s mind races. This must be what the boy she’d ran into had meant. If that’s true, than she needs to participate. Her thoughts are interrupted by Naruto. “Wait, what’s the Chuunin selection exam?”

Kakashi looks at Naruto like he’s stupid and holds out three pieces of paper. “It’s the test you take to become a Chuunin, you know what that is right?” 

Naruto sticks his tongue out at the older man, but Sakura shrinks. She hadn’t known much about the exam either. She takes one of the papers and forces her hand to loosen from its fist so she doesn’t wrinkle it.

“This is just a nomination though,” Kakashi adds. “Whether you take the exam is up to each of you. If you feel like you’re ready, then sign your application and turn it at room 301 by four pm tomorrow. That’s all for today!” Kakashi then proceeds to disappear in a poof of smoke, and Sakura doesn’t know why she expected him to stay and try to train them.

Naruto is still cheering and being a nuisance. He turns to Sasuke and grins. “There’s going to be a lot of strong guys in this thing.” Both boys rush eagerly ahead of her. When they are gone, she lets out the breath she'd been holding. Sakura feels the muscles in her face tighten as she smiles widely. She is running on four hours of sleep each night and she still has dog slobber in her hair, but she’s so _happy_.

If she is selected, if she passes, she’ll be free. Sakura might be able to leave Team Seven. She wouldn’t have to take awful D-ranks to afford her supplies. She would be allowed to read a whole new section of scrolls in the library. ‘ _And maybe,’_ Inner adds, ‘ _you’ll have the chance to prove to everyone that you aren’t as pathetic as they think you are.”_ She ignores Inner and lets the happy feeling float through her all the way to her house.

Then she reminds herself of the seriousness of an exam like this and starts packing supplies. Sakura doesn’t even realize how she’s changed, but as she drifts to sleep at a decent time for the first day in months, and she isn’t thinking about becoming a paper ninja. Sakura doesn’t want that anymore. She wants to be _famous._ She wants to be in Bingo Books. She wants people to know her name, and even though she doesn’t want to admit it, she’s willing to do almost anything for that chance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally did it! I wrote another chapter, yayy! Now I think it’s time for some thanks. You guys are the hecking best. I haven’t written in forever but I still get comments and Kudos and that makes me really happy. Two people I owe a huge thank you to are thedustbunny and mandyne. They both wrote these huge long comments that made me feel all warm and good about myself. If you have any thoughts about the fic or what I’ve written down below, then please comment because it’s one of the best things a reader can do to support a writer.
> 
> Also, I just started an Instagram where I post art and possibly soon stuff on this story. It’s doodlefucc, so if you wanna come be my friend then I’m all in for that.
> 
> Now have my two page messy rant about everything I’ve written, BUT IF YOU WANNA LEARN ABOUT WHAT I WAS THINKING THIS IS 4 U!!! First of all, let’s talk about things that may have been confusing in this chapter. One, yes Sakura is somewhat attracted to Temari but it’s a little different than her Sasuke crush so she mistakes it for killing intent bc I think she’s rather oblivious. And yes this fic might have some fem ships, but I doubt it will be the main focus and I know there won’t be smut. 
> 
> The most confusing part of this chapter, Sakura feels Gaara’s killing intent as she is leaving, but she says it feels like inner. This is because Inner is everything Sakura doesn’t show to the world. That means that Catharsis Sakura has been experiencing every bit of ki that she releases pushed back at herself instead of anyone else. That’s right, I made it so ki is a lot less effective for Sakura, but I guess she’s had to suffer for it. 
> 
> So let’s talk a little more about Sakura. This poor girl picks up one unhealthy coping mechanism after another. As seen in the manga, she believes in the shinobi rules and only starts to reconsider them after she thinks Sasuke has died on the wave mission. Soo because that didn’t happen, where does that leave her? I think my Sakura is picking up some habits that may possibly remind me of smol-kashi. 
> 
> She is so driven to become a perfect ninja that she doesn’t stop to think about anything else then getting stronger. This means she doesn’t have to face some difficult things, but it also means she is potentially damaging her body. She has no one to be a mentor, and because of that, the only work she can do is things she reads in the genin library. That means that my Sakura is relatively good at the basics, but has no one to teach her any more than that. If she had a mentor, who do you think would would be the most interesting/plausible/helpful towards her?
> 
> In the end, what I really wanted to show in this chapter is that Sakura is a child trying to be a ninja because it hurts too much to be a child. If you think about it, Naruto is basically about child soldiers so I kinda want to write about the effects of that.
> 
> I think that there are a LOT of changes by not experiencing the wave arc, and those changes are probably going to snowball a lot. To me it’s not very interesting to write an exact copy of Naruto, so when I mean cannon divergence I’m serious.
> 
> For example, Team Seven’s dynamics are quite different in Catharsis. Kakashi hasn’t seen the potential they have like he did in the wave mission, and most importantly there’s no chance for team bonding. I think this will affect things a lot in the future. If you got to the end of this, then thank you because I know it’s a mess. Tell me what you think please?


End file.
